This is cnn breaking news. Welcome to the lead. Im jake tapper. We start are breaking news. The United States is surging military aid to israel after the devastating surprise Terrorist Attack by hamas which killed at least 900 people, most of them civilians. We have also just learned that number includes at least 11 americans. This afternoon israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that israels response to the horrific attacks is just beginning. Youre looking now at images from gaza where were seeing the response play out as Israeli Forces have fired dozens if not hundreds of rockets into gaza. Hamas terrorists have taken an unknown number of innocent civilians as hostages today, threatening to broadcast their executions if israel strikes homes in gaza without warning. Were hearing continuing reports of rape. Were Hearing Reports of people dragged out of their cars and shot. Cnn crews witnessed mass excuse sites where innocent attendees of a Music Festival spent their last momen
i m brianna keilar in washington following breaking news. a diplomatic source now tells cnn that the handover for the fourth group of hostages in gaza should be complete within the hour. earlier there were significant delays over today s list of hostages. this news coming as we learn from qatar who has been obviously instrumental in these talks that the temporary truce between israel and hamas is now extending for another two days. so far 58 hostages have been set free over the last three days, 58 hostages from gaza. that number including 40 israelis, most of these women and children and in keeping with the current agreement israel has released 117 palestinians from prison, women and people 18 and under in those releases. hamas says it now has the list of prisoners to be released later today while israel has notified the families of the hostages who are expected to be freed today. we do have a team of correspondents tracking all of the latest developments. let s start now wit
month of ramadan and the jewish passover. it s considered incredibly provocative and aggressive. but many middle east experts say the timing of hamas attack had more to do with the country that is home to mecca, the holiest of places in all of islam, saudi arabia. > h hamas was really concern about the saudi moves to build ties with israel and the u.s. one concern was that saudi money would then bolsterer the palestininian authorority, its revival inin thehe west bank. > hamas looooks at this worl an emerging alliance between the modern arabs and israel and decides we re gogoing to blow this wholele thing up. if ththe scale e of civilian casusualties in n gaza is s hih if thehere is protractcted conflict, there will be strong pressure within hezbollah and within iran to say we ve got to wiwiden the coconflict. we veve alreadydy seen hehez firing rocockets. wewe ve seen uprisingsgs in tht west banank. t the p possibilityty of escalalation is vevery real. i f fea